Netflix Fall Movie Preview: Oscar Contenders, A-Listers, and The Boss

Director: Ian Samuels

Starring: Shannon Purser, Kristine Froseth, Noah Centino, Chrissy Metz

Netflix has been on a hot streak of teen comedies this year, from The Kissing Booth to To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and if you throw in the star-crossed twentysomethings of Set It Up, you can also talk about the Netflix rom-com revolution. Sierra Burgess Is a Loser is hoping to contribute to both. Starring Shannon “RIP Barb from Stranger Things” Purser, the film is a modern re-telling of Cyrano de Bergerac, which will be familiar to you if you’ve ever watched a teen comedy TV series or any movie from Roxanne to The Truth About Cats and Dogs. It’s that thing where the nerdy guy/girl helps someone more handsome woo the object of their affection with their own superior way with words. If this Netflix teen comedy revolution has been missing anything, it’s been a Clueless or 10 Things I Hate About You style modern re-telling of a classic tale, so Sierra Burgess is filling a need for sure. That is also stars To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before heartthrob Noah Centineo is merely a bonus.

Sierra Burgess Is a Loser premieres on September 7th

Director: Madeline Gavin

This documentary focuses women survivors of sexual violence in Eastern Congo. The titular City of Joy has been a refuge for these women since 2011, drawing in women from all over, forming a community all its own.

City of Joy premieres on September 7th

Director: Nicole Holofcener

Starring: Ben Mendelsohn, Edie Falco, Thomas Mann, Connie Britton, Elizabeth Marvel, Bill Camp

Holofcener been quietly building an empire of modest, talky, secretly brilliant movies about women, from Walking and Talking to Lovely & Amazing to Please Give to Enough Said. With The Land of Steady Habits, Holofcener is making a bit of a turn, focusing on a male protagonist (also, not coincidentally, her first time adapting someone else’s novel rather than writing an original script), though almost certainly with the same well-observed characters and slyly funny dialogue that we’ve been made to expect. Mendelsohn plays a newly retired man accustomed to his habits who snaps, leaves his wife, and sets out to enjoy his freedom. We’ll see what Holofcener does with that; if nothing else, we’ll get to enjoy one of the more underrated married couples in all of Hollywood: Elizabeth Marvel and Bill Camp.

The Land of Steady Habits premieres on September 14th

Director: Ariel Vromen

Starring: Marwan Kenzari, Hannah Ware, Toby Kebbell

This is the improbable true story of Ashraf Marwan, who was an Israeli Intelligence officer who embedded himself into the Egyptian power structure, ultimately becoming son-in-law to President Nasser and special advisor to Anwar Saddat.

The Angel premieres on September 14th

Director: Rashida Jones and Alan Hicks

With Parks and Recreation‘s Rashida Jones behind the camera making a movie about her father, legendary musician and record producer Quincy Jones, don’t expect much in the way of hard-hitting exposé. But do expect a whole lot of access to Quincy’s stories of discovering talent and cultivating some of the biggest stars in the world. And considering Quincy Jones is a former producer of the Academy Awards, a little Oscar attention might not be that wild a thought either.

Quincy premieres on September 21st

Director: Haifaa al-Mansour

Starring: Sanaa Lathan, Ricky Whittle

Lathan plays an incredibly put-together woman whose seemingly picture-perfect life is balancing on a thin rope of expectation. And when it all falls apart, she shaves her head bald and begins to re-prioritize. Co-starring is American Gods star Ricky Whittle, as Lathan’s prospective love interest.

Nappily Ever After premieres on September 21st

Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Riley Keough, Alexander Skarsgard, James Badge Dale, Julian Black Antelope

Jeremy Saulnier loves nothing more than to take a good genre and twist it into something far less familiar. That’s what he did with Blue Ruin, a most unlikely revenge movie that is quieter, less polished, more humanistic, and far less predictable than most were expecting. In Green Room, he took a punk band into a neo-Nazi stronghold and then locked the door and turned it into into a kind of reverse home-invasion movie. What he’s up to in Hold the Dark is anybody’s guess, which makes the prospect of the film all the more exciting. What we do know: Jeffrey Wright plays a retired wolf expert (okay!), who is approached by a young mother (Keough) in northern Alaska whose son was taken by a pack of wolves. She wants Wright’s character to kill the wolves, before her husband returns from overseas military service. From there, though, the trailer is working some dark, possibly mystical man-versus-nature vibes, and things only get worse when the husband (Skarsgard) returns. Jeffrey Wright may well be experiencing one of the best stretches of his career, and the vibe is beyond intriguing. We’re in.

Hold the Dark premieres on September 28th

Director: Tamara Jenkins

Starring: Paul Giamatti, Kathryn Hahn, Molly Shannon

The writer/director of The Slums of Beverly Hills and The Savages returns from yet another years-long hiatus (Hollywood: give this woman the means to make more films!) with this film about a married couple (Giamatti and Hahn) who are going through the long, emotional labyrinth that is infertility and assisted reproduction.

Private Life premieres on October 5th

Director: Sara Colangelo

Starring: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gael Garcia Bernal, Parker Sevak, Rosa Salazar

Sara Colangelo won the directing award at Sundance this year for this film about a kindergarten teacher on Staten Island (Gyllenhaal) who determines that a young child in her class is a poet and a gifted mind. Her dedication to nurturing the child’s talents become intense, unsettling, and even dangerous. Gyllenhall’s acting talents are monumental, and this feels like the kind of intense/terrifying/not-easily-dismissed woman who Gyllenhaal can really sink her teeth into. The last line in the trailer is chilling.

The Kindergarten Teacher premieres on October 12th

Director: Gareth Evans

Starring: Dan Stevens, Lucy Boynton, Michael Sheen

In turn-of-the-century London, a man (Stevens) must travel to an isolated island in order to rescue his sister from a sinister cult, run by a charismatic prophet (Sheen). Director Gareth Evans (The Raid: Redemption) has some experience making movies about cults. His portion of the anthology film V/H/S 2, titled “Safe Haven,” was a wild and terrifying ride and by far the best part of that film. The setup here sounds Wicker Man-esque, which can only further intrigue us, and right in time for Halloween, too.

Apostle premieres on October 12th

Director: Paul Greengrass

Starring: Anders Danielsen Lie, Jon Øigarden, Jonas Strand Gravli

Greengrass, who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Director for United 93 and has also directed the Best Picture-nominated Captain Phillips, steps up to tell the story of the terrorist attacks in Norway on July 22, 2011. 77 people were killed by a car bomb in Oslo and a mass shooting at a teen leadership camp. Greengrass has time and again proved himself to be a powerful filmmaker (he’s also made The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultiumatum), and so the challenges of selling a film without stars to an American audience largely ignorant of the real-life incident should be well within his wheelhouse.

22 July premieres on October 10th

Director: Sandi Tan

This wild true story took home the directing award at Sundance for world-cinema documentaries, and Maya Rudolph is among the film’s producers, so all signs point to this being a big deal. The doc tells the story of director Sandi Tan, who, along with her two teen friends, made Singapore’s first indie road movie with their American mentor, Georges Cardona. Only Cardona skipped town with the shot footage and disappeared. But when the film surfaces 20-some years later, Tan goes on an improbable journey.

Shirkers premieres on October 26th

Director: Orson Welles

Starring: John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Oda Kodar, Dennis Hopper

The looooong-awaited restoration of Orson Welles’ final unfinished film will ultimately make its world premiere, months after a rift between Netflix and the Cannes Film Festival nixed what was rumored to be a premiere in the south of France. The film, which was begun by Welles in 1970 and struggled through financing issues, became a notorious boondoggle, and then was never completed once Welles died. But with reels and reels of footage already shot, producers Frank Marshall and Filip Jan Rymsza began efforts to restore and complete it. It’s a new film forged from the ashes of an old disaster.

The Other Side of the Wind premieres on November 2nd

Director: Morgan Neville

As accompaniment to Netflix’s release of Orson Welles’s final film, Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom) is producing this film about the later, tempestuous years of Welles’s career, with big focus on The Other Side of the Wind, making this film a remarkably in-depth companion piece.

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead premieres on November 2nd

Director: David Mackenzie

Starring: Chris Pine, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Florence Pugh, Stephen Dillane

Scottish director David Mackenzie has found great success in his last two films set in Northern Ireland (Starred Up) and the American west (the Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water), and now he returns to Scotland with the true-life story of its greatest historical figure. Mackenzie cast his Hell or High Water star Chris Pine to play Robert the Bruce, whose battles against the English crown in medieval times united the Scottish clans. Pine takes on everything from chain-mail to battles on horseback to the Scottish accent, but if he and Mackenzie can pull it off, this could be a Braveheart-sized success. We’ll get a good idea when it opens the Toronto Film Festival in a few weeks.

Outlaw King premieres on November 9th

Director: Joel and Ethan Coen

Starring: Tim Blake Nelson, Liam Neeson, James Franco, Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Zoe Kazan, Tom Waits

The Coen Brothers and Netflix pulled a big ol’ switcheroo when they announced that what we all thought was going to be a miniseries — the brothers’ first foray into television, in fact — will instead be an anthology Western, told with that signature Coens flair. What that ultimately means could end up being just about anything, but we’ll know more once it plays the Venice Film Festival at the end of this month.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs premieres on November 16th

Director: Lukas Dhont

Starring: Victor Polster, Arieh Worthalter

Girl premiered at the Cannes Film Festival back in May and won raves and a pair of prizes: the Camera d’Or for best first film and the Best Actor prize (Un Certain Regard) for lead actor Victor Polster. The film tells the story of a 15-year-old girl born in a boy’s body whose dream is to become a professional ballerina. The transgender narrative won raves, even though some eyebrows were also raised by a film where a trans character was played by a cisgender actor.

Girl premieres on November 16th

Director: Clay Kaytis

Starring: Kurt Russell, Darby Camp, Judah Lewis

Producer Chris Columbus, who gave us one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time in Home Alone, teams up with the director of The Angry Birds Movie to deliver yet another holiday story, this time about a pair of siblings who plan to catch Santa (Kurt Russell) (!) on camera ends up launching them into an adventure and the wildest Christmas Eve you ever did see.

The Christmas Chronicles premieres this Thanksgiving.

Director: Alice Rohrwacher

Starring: Adriano Tardiolo, Luca Chikovani, Alba Rohrwacher

Another Cannes Film Festival prize-winner — this one too Best Screenplay — is this story about an enigmatic man living on the margins of his small Italian town, and maybe he can travel through time? I’m intrigued!

Happy As Lazzaro premieres on November 30th

Director: Alfonso Cuaron

Starring: Marina de Tavira, Yalitza Aparicio

Cuaron won a Best Director for 2013’s Gravity and is generally one of the most well-respected directors in all of cinema, but he hasn’t made a film in his native Mexico since 2002’s Y Tu Mama Tambien. That there are shots in the trailer to Roma that are so reminiscent of shots in Y Tu Mama Tambien is only appropriate, as the film marks his return to Mexico and his most personal project to date. The story follows a young woman who works as domestic help for a middle class family in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City in the 1970s. The time period is marked by political turmoil and student protests but is also described as “a love letter to the women who raised him.” Distributing a movie as personal as this for a filmmaker as major as Cuaron — one that looks as striking and gorgeous as what’s suggested in that trailer — could get Netflix into the Best Picture race at the Oscars at last.

Roma premieres in December

Rock legend Bruce Springsteen took to the Broadway stage in 2017 with an acoustic show that combined his songs, hiis guitar, a piano, and the personal stories that helped make his music. A stripped-down and intimate performance from The Boss, Springsteen’s Broadway show was the hottest ticket in town, and come December it’s going to be available for all to stream.

Springsteen on Broadway premieres on December 15th

Director: Susanne Bier

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, Sarah Paulson, John Malkovich

From the Academy Award-winning Danish director Susanne Bier and the screenwriter of Arrival, Eric Heisserer, come this post-apocalyptic story of a mother (Bullock) and her children trying to find a safe place and traversing a river to get there. And due to the nature of what caused the disaster, they must make the journey blindfolded. If you feel like spoiling yourself, you can look up the details of the novel, also titled Bird Box, that the film is based on. Or you could go in … blind.

Bird Box premieres on December 21st